Vessels of more than 10 metres are obliged to keep a European logbook; they fill in this document on a fishing trip basis. According to the regulations, a trip is referenced by its date of departure and return from the sea and contains one or more fishing sequences, which are themselves characterised by a fishing day (24-hour period during which the vessel carried out several fishing operations with the same gear in the same sector), a fishing gear (mesh size and dimension of the gear) and a fishing sector.

NB: The time resolution of the data is the fishing day. The fisherman fills in at least one line per fishing day and per gear. Each time the fishing area is changed, the fisherman must also fill in a new line. When using a new gear or a net with a different mesh size than the one previously used, the fisherman must use a new logbook sheet.

Vessels of less than 10 metres in length, which are not required to keep a European logbook, fill in declaratory documents called "Fishing Datasheets". Before the introduction of the national fishing form (September 2005), there was no official format: the documents are therefore very heterogeneous, both in format and in the quality of the completion.

The data on the fishing forms are not detailed by fishing trip in the strict sense. A fishing record covers a period (monthly or weekly) over which the catches are broken down by day, with a declared daily sea time. On the basis of this information, each fishing day and its catches are conventionally assigned to a fishing trip covering one day, associated with the declared sea time.

• Precision on the type of data:

The fishing trip data available are of various origins depending on the period and the data entry tools used at the time:

* For the period before 2008:

- Statpêche fishing trips (12/1971 - 12/1999): fishing records and logbooks for mainland France from 1971 to 1999

- Statpêche metropole fishing trips (01/2000 - 12/2008): fishing records for mainland France from 2000 to 2008 (entered in the Statpêche software)

- Adour fishing trips (11/1984 - 06/1997): river tides declared in the framework of the CIPE licences (amphihaline migrants: elvers, salmon, etc.)

- Overseas Statpêche fishing trips (02/1986 - 12/2008): overseas declaratory documents from 1986 to 2008

- SIPA fishing trips for mainland France (01/1998 - 12/2008): logbooks for mainland France from 1998 to 2008

* From 2009 onwards :

- SACAPT fishing trips (01/2009 - 12/2021): logbooks and paper fishing sheets from 2009 to 2021 (entered into the SACAPT software)

- ERS V3 fishing trips (01/2017 - ongoing): electronic logbooks for vessels over 12 metres

- Visio-captures fishing trips (09/2021 - ongoing): logbooks and fishing logs of vessels under 12 metres entered or remotely declared on the VISIO-CAPTURES software

• Declared parameter(s):

A fishing trip is defined by :

- A fishing trip entity describing the period during which a vessel was at sea,

- 1 to n fishing sequence(s) per fishong trip to record the declared activity of the vessel per day. A fishing sequence is identified by a start and end date, a fishing gear characterised by its size and mesh size, and a fishing sector. Each time one of these three variables changes, a new fishing sequence is created. The fishing sequence groups together several fishing operations for the same gear and the same sector (a fishing operation corresponds, for example, to a trawl haul),

- Each fishing sequence is assigned 1 to n catches describing the quantities caught by commercial species.

• Resolution of the parameter(s) :

Catch and effort data are banked by vessel and fishing sequence. A sequence corresponds to a fishing day, a gear (mesh size) and a fishing sector.

• Format(s):

Within the fishing trip data, there are three types of data:

- raw data

- month totals

- CPR data, cumulative Catch Per Rectangle

The available data exist in the following format: csv.